Heavy and light hole subbands exchange induced mixing in CdTe-(Cd,Mn)Te magnetic superlattices

We present the first calculation of the electronic structure of hole subbands in a semimagnetic superlattice in the presence of an applied magnetic field, taking into account the existence of a preferential axis of quantization for the hole spin and the fourfold degeneracy of the top of the valence band. We show that, for fields applied parallel to the layers, there is a strong exchange induced mixing of heavy and light holes subbands for any value of k, the Bloch wave vector parallel to the layers. This mixing dominates over the usual k·p induced mixing and should be observable in resonant tunneling and magnetotransport measurements on p-type samples.